To all workers: would you consider the growth outlook in your industry/sector to be positive or negative over the next 12 months?

📈 Positive (51%) – "Mental health work tends to be inversely proportionate to the state of the world, including the economy. Despite the "3.7%" inflation numbers reported, the reality is that groceries are more like 50-150% more expensive than they were 2 years ago. This is a huge stressor on families and individuals, so I anticipate being as busy as I want to be in my practice."

• "Business and leisure travel is increasing meaning it is boosting our economy in these areas making it more enticing for people to come back to work or start out a new path in our industry."

"We joke that the insurance industry is the closest thing to being recession-proof but it's pretty accurate. Almost everything around you needs to be insured and/or insured against. A company is being bought by a PE firm? There's insurance for that deal. Cybercriminals are getting smarter and more savvy? A business experiences lost revenue due to a peril? There's insurance for those risks, too. As the world continues to get more and more creative with ways to make or take money, insurance has to innovate right along with it. I worry rarely worry about the stability of my industry/job regardless of what's going on in the world."

• "The UAW strike against the major automakers will push more people to keep driving older cars = more repairs = more third-party parts, which my company provides."

📉 Negative (49%) – "Homes are not selling, due to high interest rates, which have topped 8% last week, and therefore builders are not adding supply to a dead market."

• "At the state higher ed level, public institutions are being gutted left and right, see West Virginia, Vermont, Connecticut, Florida, etc. at the moment while at the more municipal levels schools and libraries are seeing parts of the country dramatically reduce funding or making the work pretty terrible for the people willing to do it meaning there's fewer desirable positions and more people looking to change locations or forced to find a new position after getting harassed out of an old one. Perhaps one bright spot for job prospects for those staying in the fields are that many people are just leaving all together meaning some reduced competition but not enough to probably make a noticeable difference for job seekers. Full time, credentialed library work was already difficult to break into and it's just getting harder."

"Reduced savings, super high borrowing costs, general feeling of higher inflation than indicated by govt stats."

• "Rarely do healthcare workers get pay adjustments per the national standards pay."